Increase/decrease in assets: MPs will be bound to submit details with ECP

Members of Parliament will be bound to submit any increase or decrease in their assets annually with Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) for further scrutiny.
This was decided in a meeting of Sub-Committee of the Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reforms, which met here with Minister for Law and Justice Zahid Hamid in the chair.
ECP officials while briefing the committee objected to submission of annual tax returns by the parliamentarians instead of submitting their asset details.
The officials said that they could easily identify any anomaly in the assets of a parliamentarian if he/she submits details of any increase or decrease in the assets instead of the tax returns.
The committee members, however, said that it should be easier for the ECP and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to scrutinise tax returns of the parliamentarians. Therefore, the committee members and the ECP officials failed to evolve a consensus on the important issue.
After the meeting, Zahid Hamid told media persons that it was decided that all members of the parliament will be bound each year to share details of any increase or decrease in their assets with the ECP. He said the committee has also made it compulsory for scrutiny of the asset details of all the elected parliamentarians each year.
He said the ECP officials have objected to submission of the annual tax returns instead of the asset details, but the ECP and FBR are directed to evolve consensus on the issue.
The ECP and FBR officials will convene a meeting to discuss the issue and inform the committee members about their decision on the issue in the next meeting. He added that all other objections of the ECP on electoral reforms have been effectively addressed.
Hamid also said that a detailed manuscript has been finalised by clubbing all the electoral laws and election rules on which consensus has been developed.
He said that draft of the unified election laws and election rules would soon be submitted with the Parliamentary Committee after getting an approval from the sub-committee.
The minister did not share details with media about progress made so far regarding procurement of Biometric Voter Identification (BVI) and Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) despite being on agenda of the committee meeting.